In recent years, there has been an increase in demand for lens shutter cameras having good performance and high portability, i.e., ones that are smaller and lighter in weight. Additionally, there has been a trend toward using wider-angle lenses. Interchangeable lenses of the retro-focus type have been known in the prior art as wide-angle lenses for single lens reflex cameras, and lens shutter cameras having wide-angle lenses have also been known, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 5-173062. In such retro-focus lenses, a lens element of negative refractive power is arranged nearest photographic object side. However, retro-focus lenses having a short on-axis distance between the lens element surface nearest the object side and the focal plane (hereinafter this distance is termed the "overall lens length") have not become available.
On the one hand, telephoto-type lenses have also been developed as photographic lenses having a short overall lens length by using a positive refractive power lens group arranged nearest the photographic object side. For example, such a lens is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication 5-2204. In this lens there is strong asymmetry because a positive refractive power lens is too strong. When attempting to re-design such a lens to be a wide-angle lens, the curvature of field as well as lateral color, distortion, and coma become a problem at the periphery of the image plane. Since the imaging performance of the lens at the periphery of the image deteriorates, in order to achieve a re-design to a wider-angle lens having a short overall lens length while using a telephoto-type lens having a front lens group of positive refractive power, it becomes necessary to improve the imaging performance at the periphery of the image plane. This requires that, in addition to reducing aberrations such as spherical aberration and curvature of field, that aberrations such as lateral color, distortion and coma that are produced by the asymmetry of having a positive front lens group and a negative rear lens group, as is characteristic of telephoto-type lenses, also be adequately corrected.
On the other hand, although the performance at the periphery of the image plane is good in a lens system which has the structural characteristics of a wide-angle lens having an object side negative lens group and a symmetrical system overall, the overall lens length of such lenses as found in the prior art is too long.